out-of-control spending habits in place. just freeze them in place. then when they say "no," imagine telling them you don't want to cut down your monthly spending because you prefer living outside your means. this is the logic of our friends on the other side. now, according to this logic, they'd rather draw a line in the sand than agree to cut another dime in spending at a time when washington is spending about $4 billion more every day -- every single day -- than it is taking in. republicans have been hopeful that we could make progress and reach a bipartisan solution on this issue. so it's my hope that the assistant majority leader was speaking for him sieved and not for his entire side. this of course is the debate that most people in washington will continue to be focused on this week. and it's an important debate. but focusing on day-to-day expenses threatens to obscure an

even larger threat, and here i'm talking of course of entitlement programs like social security, exphair medicare, and medicaid. anyone who has looked at these programs closely knows they're becoming unaffordable. that doing nothing risks not only the future of these programs ourselves, but our nation's future as well. anyone who looks at history also knows that the best time to address a crisis like this is a time like right now, when two parties share power in washington. this is the time, mr. president. i made the case for action publicly and in private conversations with the white house. as republican leader, i put this issue front and center my first day on the job. four years ago i came to the floor and said that the demographic changes taking place in america made it incumbent

upon us as a body to reform social security. two years later when the american people put a democrat in the white house, i renewed my call for action. i said that republicans ready to work with the president on entitlement reform, and i repeated that call again four months ago when the voters decided to put republicans in charge of the house of representatives. throughout this time i've held out hope that our friends on the other side would rise to the occasion. if not when republicans controlled the white house, at least when they did. i was encouraged further when president obama said repeatedly back in 2009 that his administration would seek to work with us on serious entitlement reform that preserves the safety net for our seniors, for people with disabilities and which also puts on a firmer, stable footing for generations to come. so the president has acknowledged the seriousness of the problem. he has noted himself that calls are escalating even as the

population is getting older, creating the perfect storm for a fiscal crisis that dwarfs even today's budget crisis, as urgent as it is. if both parties agree on all of this, i thought, then there's no reason we can't do this for the good of the country. the urgency for action is only intensified in recent months as we've seen an uproar in a number of state capitals. every state is different, but the problems in every one of them can be summed up pretty easily. lawmakers from new jersey to california and just about everywhere in between made promises they couldn't keep. but the promises lawmakers in washington have made puts the states to shame. if you add up the unfunded liabilities in all 50 states, you get by one estimate about $3 trillion total. add up washington's promises on social security and medicare alone, and it's over $50

trillion. $50 trillion that we promised to the american people that we don't know how we're going to pay for. something must be done, and now is the time to do it. republicans are ready and willing. where is the president? suddenly at the moment when we can actually do something about this, he's silent. as one columnist in "the washington post" put it, for a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, the president can be a strangely passive president. one of the greatest -- on the greatest fiscal challenge of the day, he appears at least so far to have taken a pass. this is obviously deeply disappointing to me personally given my repeatedly raising of this issue. but more importantly, it should be deeply disappointing to every american who had reason to hope

that we could tackle these issues in a moment of divided government. and it should be disappointing to all of those who believe this president when he pledged he would shake up the status quo in washington. past presidents had the foresight to seize the moment, reach across party lines to solve an earlier funding problem with social security, in the case of president reagan; and welfare reform in the case of president clinton. so it's not a question of whether it's possible, but a question of whether the president has the courage to step up to the challenges that we face. in this case one can't help but wonder if the president who came into office promising change has been changed by the office instead. i hope i'm wrong about all of this, but all the signs point toward inaction on the part of the white house. and, in my view, this would be a tragic failure of leadership.

mr. durbin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: mr. president, i ask consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: mr. president, there was an interesting letter to the editor in "the new york times" over the weekend and it was sent by two minnesota state representatives. and i apologize for not having their names immediately at my fingertips but i'm going to include them in the record when we have a chance to insert them here. but a democrat and republican minnesota state representative wrote a letter to the editor. it was in response to an article written by david brooks. and brooks, whom i respect very much, is a conservative but a very thoughtful man that i read with a lot of interest. and brooks had written about what to do with the state and federal challenges when it came to budget deficits. what these two minnesota state representatives said, democrat and a republican, is that we acknowledge in our state and nation what we face. we face a situation where we have a weak economy and we face

a situation where the debts that are being incurred by our levels of government are going up too fast. and so having acknowledged that, we've got to find a solution. i'm going to probably not say this as accurately, but i thought they said it so well. they said we've come to the conclusion that we just can't cut our way out of the problem and we can't tax our way out of the problem. we've got to think our way out of the problem. we can't lurch from one budget battle to another budget battle without looking at the fact that our challenge is a structural long-term challenge. it doesn't relate to the immediate budget but to a lot of things that are happening over a long period of time. and i reflected on that for a minute, and i thought i think there's real wisdom in what they say, because if you look at what we face at the federal level, there are reasons why we're running into these budget problems, not the least of which, as senator mcconnell mentioned earlier, is the fact that the population of america is changing.

baby boomers are going to reach a point where they'll be drawing on government benefits they paid for over a lifetime. as more and more of them draw on these benefits, there's an obvious question as to whether the reserves are there to take care of them. how do we deal with that? let me speak to two issues senator mcconnell raised. the first is social security. social security, is there a program that is more important to america? i can't think of one. that is the starting point of the new deal. when president roosevelt said we have got to give seniors in america some peace of mind that when retirement rolls around and their senior years roll around that they will in fact have enough money to live on. not in a luxurious way, but the basics. there was a time, i can remember in my family and in many american families where grandparents moved back in with the kids because there was no place to go. they could no longer work and they can no longer afford their homes, and they became part of the larger family.

it happened in my family. it happened in others. then came social security. and with a little planning and a little saving and social security checks, senior citizens had independence. it was a critically important thing. it was an insurance plan, not a welfare plan, an insurance plan that virtually every american paid into and drew from. so where are we today? i arrived in congress in 1983 -- brand-new member of the house from illinois -- and they said welcome to washington, social security's broke. i said great. i thought i'd get a little breathing space here, but in fact there was none. and so, president ronald reagan and house speaker tip o'neill -- a political odd couple if you have ever seen one -- got together and hammered out an agreement. the agreement we reached and voted for in 1983 resulted in social security remaining solvent from then until 2037.

we wanted to buy 75 years of solvency but we bought over 50. so those who say today that social security is in trouble, i would remind them, untouched with no action by congress, social security will make every payment it has promised to every social security recipient with a cost-of-living adjustment every month of every year until 2037. there aren't many things you can say that about in washington, that for over 25 years this program is financially sound. but the bad news is in 2037 things change dramatically. untouched at that point, social security benefits will go down 22%. now that's a heavy hit on lower-income retirees and middle-income retirees. and so we know that looming 25 years over the horizon is a terrific challenge. president obama created a deficit commission. senator harry reid was kind

enough -- i guess kind is a word -- was nice enough to appoint me to this commission and i spent ten months listening and then voted for the final commission product. it went into social security, and it suggested some things that are inherently controversial. for example, if you're going to give social security a longer life, what's the mix? what will you cut in benefits? how much will you increase revenue? those are the two things. i said social security is basically arithmetic. medicare is advanced calculus. social security is basically arithmetic although those basic decisions get to the heart of when you retire, how much you receive when you retire, and how much you pay in your payroll deductions each month. so the commission reached an agreement, and there were parts of it i didn't like, but it did buy 75 years of solvency for social security. it is interesting that we brought it up then as part of the deficit commission because literally social security does

not add to the deficit. currently there is a surplus in the social security trust fund, and that trust fund is being invested in government securities and being paid interest, but it does not add to the deficit. and so many of my colleagues argued why are we debating social security as part of deficit reduction if it doesn't have a direct connection? and that's a legitimate point. i've raised the same point myself. i think we should look at it. we should do it in a separate and parallel track to deficit reduction. and i welcome what senator mcconnell said. let's have that conversation. but i don't think that it needs to be the necessary starting point for deficit reduction because there is no connection between the two. then i heard senator mcconnell say that the president has not shown leadership on medicare. i respectfully disagree with senator mcconnell. the whole debate about health care reform was lowering the cost of health care. you cannot balance the budget of

america with 13 million people unemployed and without addressing the skyrocketing costs of health care. and so president obama worked with congress, house and the senate, to reduce the growth in the cost of health care. one area was in medicare. and time and again the senator from kentucky and his colleagues came to the floor and gave critical speeches saying -- quote -- "the obama plan is going to take $500 billion out of medicare." day after day after day, $500 billion out of medicare. well, if we are seriously talking about budget deficit reform, if we're talking about medicare reform, we are talking about reducing the anticipated expense of medicare and reducing at least $500 billion in costs. what will that mean to the medicare recipients across america? does it mean less coverage, less care? it doesn't have to. i always use as an illustration the average cost per medicare beneficiary in my hometown of springfield, illinois, the

average annual cost is between $7,000 and $8,000. you go up to chicago, more specialty hospitals, higher cost of living, it is $8,000 to $10,000 a year for the average medicare beneficiary. then you go down to miami and the number is $14,000 to $15,000. why the dramatic difference between chicago and miami? that's a question we ought to ask. is there better care in florida or just more expensive care? can we bring the cost of that care down and not compromise the quality of the care? hard questions but the only questions that count if you want to have reform in medicare that doesn't sacrifice the basic benefits. what i would say to senator mcconnell is this: yesterday he quoted me earlier in a statement. i wasn't on the floor. yesterday i said that i was supporting not the house republican budget, but the budget proposed by senator inouye. this budget for the remainder of this year, the next six and a half months, would cut about $10 billion more out of spending.

we would have cut $51 billion below what president obama asked for this year. so in the senate we will have reached $51 billion. in the house they went $100 billion below what the president asked. i think there is a qualitative, not just quantative but qualitative difference in the approach. i think the house republican budget went too far. i just don't believe that we need to cut the basics in education for the lower-income families across america. and that's exactly what the house republican budget does. let me give you an illustration. they reduce dramatically the amount of money that's going to be spent on head start. i don't know how many members have had a chance to visit head start programs. i did a couple weeks ago in chicago. these are kids from the lowest-income families in chicago. these are kids who are most likely to drop out without some intervention, most likely to struggle in pre-k and kindergarten and most likely to have a difficult time learning. so they bring them into head

start at an early age and they learn. and the one that i visited in chicago was nothing short of amazing. they were teaching these little kids, and they were so impressive, chinese as well as nigerian lie electriniger dialee chattering away. this cannot help but prepare these kids for a classroom setting. the house republican budget dramatically cuts the head start programs. these kids and the teachers and staff that support them will be gone under their proposal. what will happen to those kids? i'm not sure. i don't know if there will be a baby sitter down the street or whether someone else will intervene. it is possible without early intervening and early training that these kids will show up in a year or two for kinder are garten and prekindergarten will

not be along as far as they should be. the second area that the house republican budget cuts is the money to school districts in the poor parts of america. now, in my home state, there are plenty of those. my hometown in east st. louis, illinois, for example to cut back on federal assistance to that poor community at this moment in time, i think, would really be a mistake. we need to make sure that these young people have good teachers and good resources and can learn even though they live in a town that is economically poor. the house republican budget cuts the money and cuts the teachers for these school districts and cuts the money for pell grants. pell grants are the college-aid grants given to students from lower-income families. many of them don't have a chance to go to school unless they get a grant to proceed with their education. the house republican budget cu cuts $150,000 a year out of the

pell grants for students from lower-income families. that, unfortunately, will mean that many of them will drop out. when i went to visit with the president of a private lutheran college in the qaw qawd city ara they predicted they would lose students. when we have high unemployment in a recession students are dropping out of college because of house republican budget cuts, obvious question, does that make america's workforce any better. are we in a better position to compete with china or other countries in the world or will we sacrifice our advantage because students have to drop out of school? i think the answer's obvious. that's why the house republican budget which some support i think goes too far. it cuts to too much in educatio. it would cut dramatically in medical research. wh